Chapter 8

[SuperScout]

The Failure to Take Security Seriously

Yet this was only half the story. During its eight years, the Clinton administration was able to focus enough attention on defense matters to hamstring the intelligence services in the name of civil liberties, shrink the U.S. military in the name of economy, and prevent the Pentagon from adopting (and funding) a ?two-war? strategy, because ?the Cold War was over? and in the White House?s judgment there was no requisite military threat in the post-Communist world that might make it necessary for the United States to fight a two-front war. Inattention to defense also did not prevent the Clinton administration from pursuing massive social experiments in the military in the name of gender and diversity reform, which included requiring ?consciousness raising? classes for military personnel, rigging physical standards so women were able to meet them, and in general undermining the meritocratic benchmarks that are a crucial component of military morale.

While budget cuts forced some military families to go on food stamps, the Pentagon spent enormous sums to re-equip ships and barracks to accommodate co-ed living. All these efforts further reduced the Pentagon?s ability to put a fighting force in the field?a glaring national vulnerability dramatized by the war in Kosovo. This diminished the crucial elements of fear and respect for American power in the eyes of adversaries waiting in the wings.

During the Clinton years, the Democratic Party?s insistence that American power was somehow the disturber?rather than the enforcer?of international tranquility, prompted the White House to turn to multilateral agencies for leadership, particularly the discredited United Nations. While useful in limited peacekeeping operations, the UN was in large part a collection of theocratic tyrannies and brutal dictatorships that regularly indicted and condemned the world?s most tolerant democracies?specifically the United States, England, and Israel?while supporting the very states providing safe harbors for America?s al-Qaeda enemies. Just prior to the World Trade Center attacks, the UN?s ?Conference on Racism? engaged in a ritual of America bashing over ?reparations? for slavery and support for Israel. The agendas had been set by an Islamic coalition led by Iran.

During the 1990s, Bill Clinton?s most frequent foreign guest was Yasser Arafat, whose allegiance to Iraq and betrayal of America during the Gulf War could not have been more brazen. Following the defeat of Iraq, a ?peace process? was launched in the Arab-Israeli conflict that predictably failed through Arafat?s failure to renounce the terrorist option. But why renounce terror if there is no price exacted for practicing it?

Clinton and the Military

It is true that the Clinton White House was able, during its eight-year tenure, to shed some of the Democrats? normal aversion to the use of American military might. (As recently as 1990, only 6 Democratic Senators voted to authorize Operation Desert Storm against Iraq.) But the Clinton deployments of American forces were often non-military in nature: a ?democracy building? effort in Haiti that failed; flood relief and ?peacekeeping? operations that were more appropriately the province of international institutions. Even the conflict Clinton belatedly engaged in the Balkans was officially characterized as a new kind of ?humanitarian war,? as though the old kinds of war for national interest and self-defense were somehow tainted. While the Serbian dictator Milosevic was toppled, ?ethnic cleansing??the casus belli of the Western intervention?continues, except that the Christian Serbs in Kosovo have now become victims of the previously persecuted Albanian Muslims.

Among Clinton?s deployments were also half-hearted strikes using cruise missiles against essentially defenseless countries like Sudan, or the sporadic bombing of Iraq when Saddam violated the terms of the Gulf peace. Clinton?s strikes failed in their primary objective: to maintain the UN inspections. On the other hand, a negative result of this ?Whack-A-Mole? strategy was the continual antagonizing of Muslim populations throughout the world.

The most notorious of these episodes was undoubtedly Clinton?s ill-conceived and ineffectual response to the attacks on the African embassies. At the time, Clinton was preoccupied with preparing his defense before a grand jury convened because of his public lies about the Lewinsky affair. Three days after Lewinsky?s grand jury appearance, without consulting the Joint Chiefs of Staff or his national security advisors, Clinton launched cruise missiles into two Islamic countries, which he identified as being allied to the terrorists and their leader Osama bin Laden. One of these missiles hit and destroyed a pharmaceutical factory in the Sudan, killing one individual. Since the factory was the sole plant producing medicines for an impoverished African nation, there were almost certainly a number of collateral deaths.

The incident, which inflamed anti-American passions all over the Islamic world, was?in conception and execution?a perfect reflection of the distorted priorities and reckless attitudes of the Clinton White House. It also reflected the irresponsibility of congressional Democrats who subordinated the safety concerns of their constituents to provide unified support for the presidential misbehavior at home and abroad.